COVID-19: Its Impact to Employment in the Philippines
The Coronavirus wreaking havoc to everything in its path in the whole world for these long two years have decidedly affected the employees in the Philippine sector. The government, having declared community quarantines of different levels, from enhanced community quarantine, to general community quarantine and its modified versions or variations, resulted to rapidly changing working arrangements to the public and the workforce.
Although necessary, these protocols issued by the Inter-Agency Task Force and spearheaded by the Department of Health to minimize the risk of COVID-19 spreading even more, has caused too much losses to all, with our common citizens, being affected the most.
With the community quarantines in effect, causing a lot of businesses to halt their operations temporarily or even permanently, many of our Filipino people have lost their source of income: employment. The closures of businesses since 2020 and the last year have not only affected the businessmen. These businesses had to let go of their employees too.
Last September 2021, the Philippine Statistics Office reported 4.25 million unemployed Filipinos which is at 8.9% which eased to 3.5 million or at 7.4% in October 2021. This was due to the easing of the restrictions and protocols implemented by the IATF.
With the addition of the Omicron variant, this 2022 though, it seems like the government is once more keen on implementing strict protocols especially in public places and in the workplace. Obviously, this will cause massive loss of income and employment once more.
